“This is an important milestone for the Baidu app, which reinforces our strategy to improve the user experience with powerful AI and deep user insight to deliver personalized feeds with a wide array of topics of interest,” said Dou Shen, Baidu VP and general manager of Baidu app. “We are delighted that the Baidu app has grown in parallel with the launch of ads-free Jiandan Search.”

“My team is honored to have our CEO Robin Li’s direct involvement in recent months, which has sped up decision making and iteration of product upgrades, as well as added growth momentum. Since Q4 2017, Robin has been providing our team with guidance and leadership and has helped us reprioritize Baidu’s news feed goals not set on user growth nor time spent, but on providing interesting and valuable information to our users,” added Shen.

“Jiandan Search embodies our latest design concepts and integrates Baidu’s cutting-edge AI technologies in natural language processing, image recognition and video,” says Haifeng Wu, Baidu VP and general manager of Baidu search. “Jiandan Search displays different results to different audiences, based on user profile, such as kids or fans of a particular celebrity. Our goal is to offer our users with more search options.”

Baidu app serves as the main channel to access Baidu’s twin engines of search and news feed and is the container that offers the most optimized Baidu experience. Jiandan Search is a recent experiment to offer an alternative search app with no ads.

About Baidu

Baidu, Inc. is the leading Chinese language Internet search provider. Baidu aims to make a complex world simpler for users and enterprises through technology. Baidu’s ADSs trade on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “BIDU.” Currently, ten ADSs represent one Class A ordinary share.